Lord Justice Pill later confirmed that Irving "may be described as a Holocaust denier".

But the attempted rehabilitation of Hitler continued with a recent German film about the dying days of the Third Reich.

The film Der Untergang (The Downfall) claimed to show Hitler for the first time as a human being rather than as a caricatured monster.

Laws against denial

Revisionist historian Mr Irving, who has also

been fined in Germany for challenging the accepted facts of the Holocaust, once declared: "Hitler is still big box office."

That cynical dictum seems to have been taken to heart by the German media managers who gave the film blanket publicity.

Seven countries, including Germany, France and Austria, have laws against denying or trivialising Nazi atrocities.

In Germany a historian was sentenced to 10 months in jail for claiming that prisoners in Auschwitz enjoyed facilities, including a cinema and swimming pool, and an American was jailed for three years for distributing anti-Holocaust propaganda.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said before his election in 1997 that there was a case for a Holocaust denial law.

However, since then the Government stance has been a less rigid approach, retaining a legal requirement to prove that words triggered a racial backlash.